Glossary — Letter U

Uniform Code Council Inc. The administrative organization for product codes in the USA and Canada.

A supplementary code for physical distribution that UCC and EAN have tried to standardize, taking international coherency into consideration.
Except for A.I. 00, it is used with case codes for concentrated packages, or the Standard Symbology for Physical Distribution, to express various information about a product that cannot be coded within it.
It uses CODE-128 for its barcode. As the start character set, an FNC1 character is inserted after the start code of CODE-128, indicating that it is a supplementary code of UCC/EAN.
The next 2 digits following the start character set are called the A.I. (Application Identifier), and indicate the content that the code expresses.
The A.I. expresses the following information:

	00		Serial code for a transport container. A code used alone, intended for identifying individual transport packages. The next 1 digit of the A.I. indicates the form of the package (pallet, container, etc.), the next 7 digits are the flag and maker code of EAN, and the following 9 digits are a serial number.
	10		Batch number. A.I. 10 indicates that it represents a batch number only.
	11		Date of manufacture.
	13		Date of packaging.
	15		Time limit for guarantee.
	17		Time limit for sale. ** All the above are combined with the batch number.
	20		Variant product. Used for variant products, i.e. those having a different packing form, etc. There are other A.I. codes already determined or still under consideration.

Universal Product Code. The pioneer of the common product code, based on UPGIP, which the US Food Chain Association established in 1970 as a common product code for the food industry. UPC was established in 1973, for the USA and Canada.
Version A (12 digits) consists of 1 digit for NS, 5 digits for the maker code, 5 digits for the item code, and 1 digit for the checkdigit.
In America and Canada, the UPC-based 12-digit system is widespread, and the 13-digit EAN symbol cannot be used. Therefore, for products exported to those countries, a UPC maker code must be obtained and the UPC symbol displayed; by 2005, UPC and EAN are expected to be compatible.

A barcode symbol for physical distribution in the U.S., which is the prototype of the Standard Symbology for Physical Distribution.
On concentrated packages, such as cardboard cases, a 0 is added before the UPC code of the contained product, for correspondence with EAN; and a further 1-digit distinction code is added before that, indicating quantity, to display both the contained product and its quantity in the package. (See Standard Symbology for PD)